After focusing on the substance of personal bankruptcy laws around the world for years, I'm now convinced that I should instead have been focusing on institutions and procedure. Reports of the first year of the Russian personal bankruptcy process convince me further. In a paper anticipating the new law, I predicted potential process hangups, but I badly underestimated the degree to which procedural complications would waste time and resources and undermine the system's new effectiveness.
Unlike the bankruptcy judges in Nortel, who synchronized their trials in a landmark case of cross-border insolvency cooperation, the appellate judges run at their own speed, so results will trickle in here and there.
